“Ghosts of Revolution gives us a great lesson in humanism at a time in
history when we insist on the outer signs of international conflicts and
lose sight of the inner struggles and sufferings of the people, each taken
individually, who are the unbreakable core of what really matters. Shahla
Talebi is a survivor with no hatred in her heart. We are all implicated in
what she has to say.”

—Etel Adnan, author of Master of the Eclipse and Sitt Marie Rose

“With a courageous act of painful but empowering recollection, Shahla
Talebi restores dignity to an entire generation of political prisoners
and rescues the art and craft of memoir. Westerners, who have too
often been assured that in Iran young women are reading Lolita while
waiting to be liberated by the US Marines, will come away with entirely
different picture of the country and of a caring, defiant, courageous, and
determined woman. Ghosts of Revolution is the forbidden and forgotten
social history of Iran, the moral vindication of a people written from the
vantage point of a political prisoner, from the bared life of a liberating
conscience. Judiciously poetic, pulling no punches, but above all showing
an abiding love for the people of a homeland that is now blessed to have
her as its storyteller, Shahla Talebi reassures the world that the right and
the beautiful are still triumphant.”

—Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University

“Ghosts of Revolution is both a powerful testimony and an important
political act from an author sharing her singular experience of eight years
behind prison bars. Remarkable in Talebi’s memoir is her profound sense
of dignity and resilience in the face of absolute despair and brutality.
With a philosophical edge, her book helps us all to face our humanity
and vulnerability and, most of all, to grasp that fine barrier between life
and death, hope and submission. With clarity, honesty, and a lack of
sentimentality, Ghosts of Revolution speaks to the resilient nature of the
human spirit in the face of adversity and the abyss.”

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